The song thus became a Top 10 hit in Britain in 1985. 5 perfume commercial in the United Kingdom. Simone went through a career renaissance in the 1980s when her song 'My Baby Just Cares For Me' was used in a Chanel No. Critics gave the album a warm reception, but it did not fare well commercially.

Simone, who had taken a break from recording in the mid-70s, returned in 1978 with the album Baltimore, with the title track a cover version of a Randy Newman tune. For years, Simone also struggled with severe mental health issues and her finances, and clashed with managers, record labels and the Internal Revenue Service. Having been neighbors with Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz in Mount Vernon, New York, she later lived in several different countries, including Liberia, Switzerland, England and Barbados before eventually settling down in the South of France. in 1968, Simone's bassist Greg Taylor penned 'Why (The King of Love Is Dead),' which was performed by the singer and her band at the Westbury Music Festival.Īs the 1960s drew to a close, Simone tired of the American music scene and the country's deeply divided racial politics.

After the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. She also penned 'Four Women,' chronicling the complex histories of a quartet of African American female figures, and 'Young, Gifted and Black,' borrowing the title of a play by Hansberry, which became a popular anthem. She wrote 'Mississippi Goddam' in response to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young African American girls. Prominent Civil Rights Singer: 'Mississippi Goddam' and 'Four Women'īy the mid-1960s, Simone became known as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. 'If I had to be called something, it should have been a folk singer because there was more folk and blues than jazz in my playing,' she later wrote in her autobiography. She didn't like the label of 'jazz singer,' either. She was often called the 'High Priestess of Soul,' but she hated that nickname. Her classical training showed through, no matter what genre of song she played, and she drew from a well of sources that included gospel, pop and folk. In many ways, Simone's music defied standard definitions.

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